


Waking the Witch

by Laurentia



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: AU ending, F/F, Gen, Hints of Swan Queen/Dragon Queen, Panicking Emma, Past Sea Devil, Sad broken Cruella, Standalone series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-16
Updated: 2016-03-16
Packaged: 2018-05-27 03:17:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6267397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laurentia/pseuds/Laurentia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Regina severely doubted anything could fix Cruella’s head in the way it truly needed it but that was something to worry about if the woman ever decided to wake up.</p><p>AU ending to 'Sympathy for the De Vil' in which Cruella survives her fall and Emma needs her to wake up for the sake of her sanity.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Waking the Witch

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Try telling me that my badass bae couldn't survive that fall. Just try...

Or; _the One Where Cruella Dies Twice._

* * *

 

_"Emma, what did you do?"_

_The voice was familiar, distant and unwelcome. She heard it as if through a wind tunnel and the meaning of it took few moments to register in her clouding mind. It was an effort to focus, to try and make sense of the question as the words came apart, rejumbled and she tried to fit them together: what_ had _the Saviour done?_

_The answer came easier, with the sort of clarity that could only be granted to someone in her position._

_The Saviour had killed her. Terribly irksome thing. One push too far and she had flown all the way to the bottom of the cliff and bounced on the rocks below, cracking and breaking as she took rubble and loose roots with her._

_"Emma?!"_

Just go Regina _, she thought with the mournful knowledge that it was in vain and a sting of indignation that the Queen would end up being the last thing she heard in this world._ Leave well enough alone and for god's sake don't look down.

_The Queen couldn't hear her and wouldn't have listened if she could because a moment after she distantly heard a girlish mewl of horror from above purple smoke took Regina on the safer route to where she lay._

_"Oh my god," the low register was closed now, too close, practically purring in her bloodied ear._

Just go Regina. Let it end and don't let Maleficent crush my beautiful Panther.

_"She's still alive."_

* * *

 

Regina sighed as she flipped through the turgid pages of the ancient magazine, glancing up at the white clock attached to the cool, sterile walls of the hospital that she had already looked at so many time she could accurately describe each speck of dust on it, and despaired that the hands were belligerently refusing to pass at the sort of speed she would have preferred them to. She had been here an hour already, worked her way through the last few chapters of the paperback in her purse, played Candy Crush till her lives ran out, drank two cups of the disgusting coffee – she really should inspect the hospital’s budget and ensure visitors got better quality beverages when they were visiting the sick or guarding a labouring woman or, in her case, praying for the life of someone she wasn’t too sure actually deserved to live – and now she was bored. Well, technically there _was_ something else she could do with her time, it just meant squaring her back and being brave.

Cruella had been in the hospital for two days after a plume of Regina’s magic had teleported her from the rocks to the hospital in one swift moment and she was yet to wake up. Which meant there was no information they could garner from her, nor was she likely to be much use as a bargaining chip given Regina’s theory about how invaluable Cruella actually was to Gold’s cause, and yet she still found herself willing the damned woman to live more than she had any of her own victims.

 _Although she’s not exactly a victim_ , Regina pursed her lips and nodded politely at Dr Whale as he passed and glanced through the glass window to Cruella’s room with something that was unnervingly like reverence. He had been surprisingly helpful when it came to Cruella’s care – given the general feeling in town Regina hadn’t imagined people falling over themselves to help out – and she had briefly considered whether there might be a connection between the enigmatic doctor and the woman in the bed. It wouldn’t have surprised her, given that neither of them were, to the best of her knowledge, originally from the Enchanted Forest, and the world seemed determined to prove its miniscule nature to her time and time again. But she had seen nothing else to support the thought and when she had mentioned it in passing to Charming as they swapped shifts on the first day his amusingly bitter response had been to suggest that in the realm of psychopaths perhaps Cruella was the Queen?

She couldn’t really fault the logic.

She could fault the crappy magazine though and she tossed it aside with irritation and decided to bite the bullet and go in the room. She also decided that when she went over the hospital’s budget in addition to improving their coffee she also needed to get them some magazines from after 1983.

The room was quiet but for the rhythmic beeps of the machines around the bed and Cruella looked as bad as she had when they’d brought her in. Pale as chalk without her make-up - Regina was unsurprised that the eyebrows hadn’t come off - and so reduced by the hospital gown on her scrawny body that it almost made Regina feel sorry for her. The bandage around her head was comically oversized but did little to hide the bruises that covered her jaw and the back of her neck, crawling up behind her ears in a hue that looked as though it had been daubed on with gothic lipstick. Underneath the bedcovers lay greater, but less critical damage, according to Dr Whale at least. A broken hip, fractured ribs and a collapsed lung he could fix, or so he said and Regina had asked him stony-faced whether he’d helped himself to any organs before he’d ignored her and carried on, but the damage to the head it was up to time and Cruella to fix.

Regina severely doubted anything could fix Cruella’s head in the way it truly needed it but that was something to worry about if the woman ever decided to wake up.

On the chair next to the bed she spotted the battered brown suitcase, laid out flat but unopened since Granny had dropped it off with a bill for two nights unpaid during Snow’s shift keeping an eye on Cruella yesterday. The case was old and dull enough that Regina identified it as something of Granny’s and therefore it probably _didn’t_ have anything too awful in it if the old wolf had packed it, but there was the possibility of it being Ursula’s and the sea bitch leaving a surprise behind for them all. It needed checking out just in case, they had collectively decided, and as so often happened when the two idiots made a decision it had somehow fallen to her to see the task done. Which was typical and robbed her of the joyful possibility of seeing Snow’s face if Cruella had some disturbing sex toys.

She unzipped it neatly, flipping open the top and immediately raised an eyebrow at the dull contents. Clothes. Underwear. A half empty bottle of gin. A handbag. Not really what she had expected from the bombastic woman and a fairly sad collection of world possessions.

She reached inside, her hand hovering for a moment as she considered the unlikelihood of Cruella having washed any of her clothing in the last fortnight, before carefully pulling out the handbag. It was better quality than the case, but felt rubbery in her hand. She immediately identified it as being Ursula’s rather than the flashier Cruella’s and Regina opened it marginally less trepidation. There was little of interest given who it belonged to, but she was the very last person to be surprised that a villain might still carry around perfectly ordinary things. A few tissues, a purse that had seen better days and didn’t feel especially heavy, a couple of pens with the logo and name of a New York Aquarium on them, and not much else but old crumpled up receipts and the odd loose coin. She opened the side pocket and felt a piece of paper.

“You know a lot of people would call that rude?”

Regina spun around to stare wide-eyed and speechless at Cruella. But the women was still silently breathing slowly, still dead to the world. Her gaze flipped up quickly to the door when movement caught her eye.

“Emma?”

The blonde stood awkwardly in the door, looking only marginally better than Cruella and Regina blindly dropped the purse back in the case and crossed to Emma with tentative steps, her eyes never leaving the other woman as she assessed her quickly. She was terribly pale, the red rims around her eyes too noticeable for her to bother even trying to cover them with make-up and Regina was sure she was wearing the same clothes she’d had on when they charged into the woods to save Henry. Her hand fluttered between them for a moment, the impulse to take Emma’s hand or rub her arm momentarily overwhelming but she stopped herself and pushed her own hair back behind her ear instead.

“What are you doing here?”

“I wanted to see…” Green eyes vanished behind lashes and lids for a long moment before opening again, sparkling with tears, turning her eyes into oceans. “My parents wouldn’t tell me how she was and…and…”

The tears came so suddenly and violently that it took Regina aback. They rarely cried around each other. In fact she was sure the last time had been the dreadful moment when they’d both stood over a cursed Henry and Regina had been sure she had destroyed her son. Back then Emma had grabbed her, thrown her into the closet and pushed her against the wall with force but that felt a hundred lifetimes ago now and she reached out to the blonde without hesitation, shutting the door on Whale and the rest of the hospital. Her hands grasped Emma’s biceps awkwardly as she pulled her closer and had it been in any less dire circumstances she might have laughed at how they both moved their heads to the same side initially, but Regina couldn’t laugh. It was all she could do not to cry herself at the sound of Emma’s tears and she reached her hand up the back of Emma’s head, guiding her to her shoulder and leaving her hand there as the other slipped around Emma’s waist, pulling her in tightly.

“Shhh, Emma it’s alright. She’s alive, it’s fine,” between her fingers long strands of hair felt heavy but soft and she could immediately tell from the texture that Emma hadn’t washed it since before the hunt for Henry. “She’s going to be fine.”

“Really?” Emma snorted incredulously, lifting her head from where it had rested but not moving away from the embrace. “Because she doesn’t look _fine_ Regina and _I_ did that.”

“She brought it on herself Emma-”

“No.” Emma took a step back and ran the back of her sleeve across her cheek to wipe away some of the tears. “Do you remember when Zelena had Henry? She was holding him exactly the same and I used magic to make her let him go. Why didn’t I just do that again?”

“Zelena didn’t have a gun to his head.”

Emma rolled her eyes. “Zelena was a gun to all our heads, Regina.”

“You panicked,” Regina said firmly, conjuring a tissue from the packet in Ursula’s bag and holding it out to Emma. “You lashed out. It was perfectly understandable and _no one_ is going to condemn you for it.”

“I bet _she_ would,” Emma took the tissue silently and nodded her head towards where Cruella lay, taking a few small steps closer to the bed before stopping. “They won’t tell me… is she going to live?”

“I don’t know,” she answered bluntly, bending over to pick up the paper she had dropped when Emma surprised her and turning it over in her hand, discovering the matte sheen of an old photograph.

“What’s that?”

“Nothing.”

Her response must have come too quickly because Emma’s arm, apparently still in possession of quicker reflexes than her own despite how tired Emma seemed, darted out and pulled it from her fingers. Emma’s face looked blank for a long moment in which Regina held her breath, waiting for the picture to sink in

“Are you okay Emma?”

“Yeah,” Emma blinked out of her mini-trance and managed a small, watery smile as she propped the picture up again a pitcher of water on the side table next to Cruella, displaying it like a macabre portrait at a wake. Late 80s judging by the clothes, grainy, old, practically sepia, but unmistakably Cruella and Ursula, presumably after they had fallen through the portal, looking ludicrous in furs and shoulder pads but smirking to each other, utterly ignoring the camera. “Was that in the stuff Granny sent?”

“It was in Ursula’s bag.”

“So she had it all those years?” Emma posed rhetorically, folding her arms and turning away from the image of the smirking Cruella of old and the broken one of now to meet Regina head on. “If she wakes up I want us to help her like Hook did for Ursula. It’s only fair.”

“She will wake up Emma,” replacing the handbag Regina lifted the case and found Emma immediately taking it from her hands to put it on the floor and free up the chair. “She’s far too obnoxious to do anybody the favour of dying quietly.”

Emma flinched and closed her eyes, her head lowered and Regina immediately kicked herself. Carefully she reached out to wrap her fingers around Emma’s arm, earning herself green eyes and the blonde’s attention.

“She _will_ wake up,” she repeated with more certainty. “For now Whale’s taking good care of her and if it comes to it we can try using magic on her head. The rest she can live with and it can serve her right if she can’t drive that godawful car for a while.”

Emma’s small, watery smile returned and Regina felt triumph spark within her.

“Do you mind if I stay?”

“Of course not. I’d like the company,” she smiled and sat, glancing at the other seat and Emma got the hint and took it. With any luck the Saviour would start to doze and she could send her home to the comfort of her bed and a decent sleep – god knows they could all do with it and no one more than Emma.

“So…they really were a thing then?”

“They were. The first time Mal told me about them, years ago now,” Regina raised a bemused eyebrow and smirked as she glanced at the photograph again, struck by several memories at once. “I assumed it was a joke. Or else Ursula was desperate.”

“Kinda harsh,” Emma said, but there was a small hint of amusement that cheered Regina. They might just be okay if she could see Emma smile again.

“Ursula was the great witch of the sea, feared across all the known oceans, although not as feared as I was,” despite herself, she had to try a little harder than she would have liked to keep the pride from her voice. “And Cruella was…no one. No one knew her or where she was from or what she’d done. She was just this odd little woman with a big mouth who took her rottweilers everywhere and had never seen a horse up close and brewed gin in Mal's castle - I think she nearly poisoned us all one night you know? In hindsight I'm not convinced that anyone without magic to protect them could have drank what she gave us and lived-"

“Wait,” Emma held up a hand, confusion marring her brow. “If none of you had heard of Cruella de Vil before why did I overhear Nova humming her song?”

“Our curse memories know her,” she said patiently. “But she was from another realm, another story other than ours. No one knew her. Just like no one would have known about Dr Frankenstein out there or my sister if they didn’t have curse memories.”

Emma nodded, as though she hadn’t just thought of a thousand more questions on the subject of how the hell Cruella was even in the Forest in the first place but she moved on. Those were probably questions for later and she didn’t feel like getting into the whole dark, sordid history of this woman with Regina right now. Instead she spared another glance for the photograph and let her gaze settle on Cruella in the bed – she owed her the courtesy of her attention.

“You guys were friends right? Back in the Enchanted Forest I mean?”

“Just because we were both villains you think we were friends?”

“You seemed pretty familiar when they turned up is all,” Emma pictured the day. Ursula smug and quiet, an ocean of secrets inside her as she sat next to Cruella in the car, tentacles emerging for the first time in decades and flexing their muscles again. Cruella doing the talking, as Emma suspected it had always been, half-bluster, half-menace and with an overwhelming scent of cigarettes and motor oil coming from the car.  And both of them making the sort of eye contact with Regina that was too full of suggestion for Emma to ever believe they were strangers. “She was giving you the full _dahling_ so I just assumed you’d know each other before. And then you guys had your big night out.”

"We did," Regina nodded in acquiescence, unable to deny the drunken memories, though she would have dearly liked to. "But Cruella and I were never exactly friends. In fact," her lips twitched and Emma’s head tilted towards her to catch the rest. "The first time we met she smashed a bottle of wine over me."

"Seriously?!" Emma laughed despite the small hint of concern in her voice, as though it had happened moment ago, not decades.

"She did," Regina nodded with a small smile and incline of her head towards Cruella. "I came to visit Mal at the fortress and I didn't realise she'd got herself some... Well I'm sure _they'd_ have called themselves houseguests but I always thought they were freeloaders."

"What did Maleficent call them?"

"Friends."

“Really?”

“I know. I found it hard to believe too but I think they really were friends.”

 _Were_ lingered between them and Regina knew Emma wasn’t stupid enough not to notice Mal’s conspicuous absence. In fact, though Gold clearing up a loose end had been the initial drive behind their guarding of Cruella it had taken Regina’s promise of assistance in finding her daughter to simmer the dragon’s ire.

“She asked after her last night in fact.”

Emma’s expression was unreadable despite her clear exhaustion - or perhaps that was just overshadowing everything else? - and Regina cursed herself. She could have timed _that_ better, even if her odd need to gage Emma’s opinion of Maleficent was ineffable to her.

“And we hit on a thought.”

“I bet you did,” Emma muttered, but not without a spark of humour dancing in her eyes that beguiled Regina utterly. Surely she didn’t know what Mal had been to her? “Sorry, go on.”

“Well we originally thought Gold only needed Ursula and Cruella to get into town but he’s too resourceful not to have had half a dozen ways to get back in. So he needed them specifically.”

“So, why them?” Emma prompted, nodding as she followed the recounted trail of the conversation. Nevertheless Regina continued, if only to cover the beeps from Cruella’s machines.

“Exactly. He clearly didn’t need their magical skills,” _such as they are_ , Regina mentally added, glancing at Cruella warily as though the woman could hear her slight against them. “So he just needed _them_. And as easily as I could believe that the Imp brought them here just to have someone to do his dirty work in finding the author I think, and Mal agrees, that he brought them, and her, here for you.”

"For me?"

“They were desperate and he must have known Ursula would still be nursing that old grievance against Hook… and I suppose he couldn’t have _known_ Cruella would go after Henry to force our hands but it would hardly take Machiavelli to assume she would. She never was the most inventive woman.”

“So he set them up.”

“I believe so. Them…” Regina swallowed heavily. “And you.”

If Regina could have thought of a way to relieve Emma of the troubled expression clouding her exhausted face as the implications began to dawn on her then she would have done it in an instant. Her hand twitched where it lay, her body apparently feeling the need to reach out and comfort Emma but from here she couldn't reach her so she would have to get up, walk closer, crouch and take Emma's hand and though she dearly _wanted_ it would make it a thing and there was far too much going on for her to even contemplate the state of their friendship and-

The sudden unrhythmic beeps crashed through her contemplation like a particularly aggressive alarm, shocking them both for a still second until they regained themselves and Regina shot to her feet at the same time Emma did, unable to match Emma’s quicker stride to the bed. Emma's panic heightened as her eyes went wide, one hand reaching out to push the hair from around Cruella's face with surprising tenderness given the circumstances and Regina felt her insides sink as Cruella’s machines slowed and she knew what Emma was going to say before she said it.

"Shit Regina I don't think she's breathing!"

If she was then Cruella's body was putting on a final show for them. Her atrophied limbs shook jerkily in a last display of strength and a small spot of blood seeped from the corner of her lips and all Regina could think was that Cruella might actually like dying with blood in her mouth.

"Regina! She can't die, you said...I can't have killed her," Emma spoke quietly and surprisingly leveled, but the panic was still in her eyes and it snapped her to attention. Regina flung the door open with a wave of her hand, letting the noise travel down the corridor to summon Whale, putting her trust in his skill as a physician as instinctively as she would trust Ruby Lucas to hunt or Mal to fly. She certainly didn't care for the man but if any doctor could stop the inevitable march of death then she had a grudging faith that he was probably the one to do it.

In the brief heartbeat she had turned away Emma had pulled Cruella closer and Regina forgot for a moment that Cruella was already dead and had to swallow her instruction to be careful. The starchy hospital sheets were around her waist and Emma's arms were holding her up, tubes were pulled taut by the new position of her tiny, _tiny_ body and Emma had a hand around the back of her head, holding her gently like a limp doll.

"Emma..."

The pearly white glow of magic engulfed both women in front of her, so bright it was hard to look after a while but Regina couldn't take her aching eyes away from the sight and only vaguely heard Whale and his team arriving behind her. The point where Emma ended and Cruella began became blurry in the glow and Regina’s mouth fell wide, having no more explanation for the display of white magic than anybody else who was crowding into the room.

“Madam Mayor?”

“I don’t know.”

What she did know was that this was power the likes of which she had never witnessed before. She had seen strength of this magnitude - her sister and Mal and Rumplestiltskin had dazzled her more than once, but she had never seen it wielded by a pure heart. Emma Swan had been given this power at birth and didn’t know a thing about what she was doing, but she knew her intentions and as it dimmed and the magic fled away, it’s job done for now, Regina was unsurprised to see Emma looking just as confused by her abilities as they were.

“What...what did I do?”

The machines beeped. Regina’s eyebrow raised and she wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry.

“You’ve either saved her,” Cruella’s eyes opened as she took a deep, rattling breath, vitality restored but still resting in Emma’s arms. “Or possibly made her immortal, but let’s not consider the worst case scenario just yet.”

God, they really needed to research Emma more.

"What the buggering fuck happened?!"

Regina raised an eyebrow sharply, less interested in Cruella now she was apparently out of the woods, and much more concerned for the look of astonishment on Emma's face that was threatening to crack into panic at any moment. 

"You fell." Regina twitched her fingers and was gratified when Cruella hissed against Emma's shoulder, teeth gritted and fingers gripping the bedcovers with weak strength. 

"Regina?!" Emma gasped, glancing between the two other women in the room. "Wh-"

"I told you Emma. We'll fix her head. She's not getting away with it that easily though."


End file.
